FRENCH INTERNATIONAL MODERN FILM AND SCRIPT FESTIVAL
Selection of the season
September - November 2023
In 7 categories
As a love letter to old Hollywood, Emily or Oscar is a 'Hollywood golden era' throwback romantic comedy. With silent film references and Hollywood studio life, everyone is sure to get a laugh as they take a ride through screenwriter, Sam Feldman's wild imagination.
Chris M. Allport
Best Animation
This is a story of the Atlantisians in 9593 B.C.
The people of Atlantis live desperately through the repeated wars and many earthquakes. Marissa who loves her hometown meets a scholar foretelling the ruin of the Atlantis. Marissa and her childhood friend try to save him. This is the message from Atlantis beyond 10, 000 years.
Misaki K. Asamie
A Tale of Two Weddings
Best Animation
“A Tale of Two Weddings” continues Candy Kugel’s series of autobiographical films starting with “I,Candy” (2018), then “Miracle on Central Park West” (2020). “A Tale of Two Weddings” chronicles the seemingly impossible task of attending two important family obligations taking place 48 hours apart—one on the Jersey Shore, NJ USA and the other in Jerusalem, Israel. With two very different families and traditions…or were they?
Candy Kugel
Best Animation
Best Original Song
An unlikely friendship turns to love when a dog and cat go through tough times.
Steve Cowden
Best Animation
Adam is a 15-year-old teenager who has the strange peculiarity of having a body that changes, in based on the mockery and negative comments he receives from those around him. The accumulation of its physical changes, only adds a layer of complexity to those already present in his life.
Joël Vaudreuil
Best Animation
A musical gardener ejects his hired hand, leading to things on his little planet going horribly astray.
Christopher Angus
Best BLM Film
After being constantly teased for her dark complexion, a young girl rejects the sweet nickname her mother gave her and comes to discover its beautiful origin within a 1960's Mexican folk song.
Lesley Elizondo
Best BLM Film
Best Short Film
Already tired from a long trip, Alonzo Rey returns home to discover a mailbox full of legal fallout from his recent run-in with abusive cop Detective Ruby. Alonzo's early return spooks his girlfriend, who dials 911 to report what she thinks is a home invasion. It's bad enough to have another altercation with the police, but when Ruby spots his chance to take advantage of this situation, Alonzo's life is thrown headlong into chaos.
James Curry
Best Comedy
Two "made" women from a certain "family" decide to help educate the youths of America.
Daryl Hrdlicka
Best Comedy
Spoof Sketch Parody of three comical sketch characters discussing the them of "Sugarbabies." Comedy like MadTV or SNL.
Kevin Janaway
Best Action Screenplay
Brigg, an aging pickleball sensation, with supernatural speed, and dark mysterious origin, becomes the target of the Cartel after he inadvertently rescues a young trafficked girl from their clutches. ..
Jim Carroll
Best Animation
Best Short Film
Poppy the puppet explores the world and all of its' challenges.
Mithun Hassan
In 5 categories
A man hides out in an abandoned shack after a monster takes his family one single night. He is presumably the last man on Earth and only comes out during the day when the monster seems to be hiding. One day,...
Cade Garrett
Best Mobile Film
Best Experimental Film
Best Actor
A demon in full possession of a human being speaks out about the truth of who they are, who they are not, how they do it, and why. Aren't you curious?
Todd Allen Fischer
Best Book
This book about a young woman who went through cycles of hurt, pain, rejection and disappointment BUT GOD brought her through!
It is based on Ecclesiastes 3:1.
Marion Myers
Best Book
Rattlesnakes are much maligned primarily because they are much misunderstood, In Rattlesnake Rules, award-winning children's author and science editor Conrad J. Storad removes the veil of mystery from these fascinating creatures and imparts to young readers valuable information that will help them better understand rattlesnakes and to keep both the children and the snakes safe.
Conrad J Storad
Best Feature Documentary
Best Cinematography
In 1993, Washington State voters passed the three-strikes law and sent children to prison for life without parole. We feared these children as irredeemable superpredators. Our fear was wrong, but in 2020, sixteen states continue to keep children in prison for life. SINCE I BEEN DOWN shows the power of these children, now adults nearly forty years later, creating a true path to justice and healing from inside their prison walls.
Gilda Sheppard
The Dead Guy
Best Comedy Screenplay
After being separated from his body, a wealthy but arrogant college student must find a way to return to his normal life, while embarking on misadventures with his reanimated corpse. A horror-comedy spin on the classic tale "Beauty and the Beast".
Diego Balasquide
Best Feature Script
Best Comedy Screenplay
Krayzy Dead is comedy about a dysfunctional family that owns operates in funeral home. Seems even the dead need a good laugh now and then.
Horatio Tihanyi, Dawn Nargi
Best Short Documentary
On 19 June 2009 Kostya Proletarsky, a drug user and HIV activist, died of tuberculosis meningitis at the Botkin Hospital in St. Petersburg, Russia. His death was the result of three years of mistreatment and torture at the prison facility No. 4 in Karelia, Russia.
István Gábor Takács
Best 360 Film
With Genesis you embark on a 24-hour journey to experience the dramatic milestones in the evolution of earth and mankind with a previously unknown intensity.
Chaos, rebirth and catastrophes mark the history of Earth, yet mankind exists. 4.7 billion years of evolution...
Joerg Courtial
Dinner At Seven
Best Feature Script
Best Comedy Screenplay
Best Young Screenwriter (under 30y)
The picture perfect BRIDE & GROOM take out their MAID OF HONOUR & BEST MAN to a cheesy Italian restaurant a week before their big weeding to break up with them. Secrets, jealousy, sex, drugs, violence & bad Italian accents…
Tonights chaos will be served flamming hot!
Rodrigo Badoino
Fearless Indigenous
Best Covid-19 Film
This documentary shows us the simple and traditional life of an indigenous family who lives in a small house on top of the Sierra Nevada mountain during the lockdown in global pandemic. The main character is a 13 year old indigenous boy, Felix. He and his family of 6 people belong to the last 2000 indigenous people remaining of the Wiwa tribe.
Tunc Topcuoglu
Zizhong, 23. october
Best Covid-19 Film
On October 23, China's new national leader was born in Beijing, and the quarantine and lockdown management of the community epidemic prevention and control was still being implemented in remote Zizhong county.
Guozhi Zhang
"Take"
Best Dance Video
Where do art forms go to die, when ballet and modern are left behind do they dance together in the in-between before parting ways?
Jon McWilliams
Best Dark Comedy
Hollywood writers go to murderous lengths for a killer ending.
Rickey Teems II, Daniel B. De Sangre
Best Feature Documentary
Best Director
Best Drama
Camille, a young French climatologist, has a string of research contracts at the French National Center for Scientific Research. But understanding how the climate itself works and only drawing curves announcing future catastrophes on a screen are no longer enough for her. She decides to get closer to the lands and the peoples, all as far away as close to her research laboratory.
Hugo Dayan
Best Short Film
Best Director
Best Director Debut
A big secret, a wicked sexual need and a dirty game with no return.
Smaro Angelakopoulou
Drawn
Best Short Film
Best Thriller
Best Director
A widower and his young daughter fend off a predatory land speculator by any means necessary in this psychological thriller set on a dying ranch in the Southwest. With shifting points of view and a twisting power structure, the story delves deep into our perception of control, unraveling a family mystery that spawns eerie tension, abducts our expectations of good and evil, and draws us in to a shocking reveal.
Ty Clancey
RESTORATION
Best Short Film
Best Director
Best Short Screenplay
Moscow investment banker Vyacheslav is on his way to the grand opening of the Renaissance theatre. His driver is ill and the city is in gridlock, so he calls a limousine service so that he can pick up his highly-strung actress girlfriend, Sveta on time to make the opening.
When the limo arrives, instead of the usual man in a cap, he is taken aback to find a beautiful, charismatic lady driver who immediately engages with him in a way he finds hard to ignore...
Gerard Michael MacCarthy
Best Short Film
Best Drama
Best Director
Best Actress
A tied up woman wakes up in a cellar. She doesn't know how and why she got there.
Stéphane Zuède
Best Director Debut
When a young girl with Tourette's encounters a struggling street performer on a city bus, a quirky and inspirational friendship is formed causing the world around them to alter in unexpected ways.
Jamie Sage Cotton
Dancing for whom?
Best Director Debut
Best Original Score
“Dance For Whom” is a universal story of the conflict between material success and happiness. A small-town Chinese boy’s ambition has launched him far beyond farming, to international ballet stardom. Kapu returns home after 8 years, seeking help from his hometown, but he can no longer relate to the people there, nor they to him. Follow his heart wrenching journey as he slowly rediscovers the simple beauty of human connection and fulfillment.
Zongqi Shijia Tian
Best Drama
Two brothers winemakers, owners of a large estate in Beaujolais in 1986, live a little apart from the world and have no other passion than their vineyard, their land and their wine production.
One evening, as Yann is coming home from a dinner, he discovers a damaged car in the ditch and finds in the vehicle a splendid young woman about thirty ...
Klaudia LANKA
Best ECO work
“Leafcutters” is an unusual collaboration with millions of wild ants. Focusing on four supposedly unique human traits – language, ritual, war and art – the narrative aims to blur the boundaries between culture and nature.
Leafcutter ant colonies have eerie parallels to human society and this is the inspiration for the video. To quote from eminent biologist E.O. Wilson, these ants are “the most complex social creatures other than humans.”
Catherine Chalmers
Best No-Dialogue Film
Best Educational Film
What might a world without money look and feel like? A way forward addressing the two great challenges of our time — ecological unsustainability and socio-economic inequities.
Anitra Nelson